How does your backyard garden grow?

I don't have a green thumb.
When little plants misbehave, their parents threaten to send them to my yard.
But with supermarket prices for produce on the rise, it seemed a good time to try, yet again, to grow a vegetable garden. And I wouldn't be alone. According to the National Garden Assn., hard times seed more gardens.
"The high point we had was in 1975, 1976, when there was a gas crisis and Gerald Ford had his Whip Inflation Now program," said Bruce Butterfield, research director for the association, which has been tracking gardening since 1973. "At that point, 49% of households had them."
Last year and in 2006, the percentage stood at 22%. This year, Butterfield expects a resurgence. "We have gotten information from Burpee and other seed companies that they've been up in sales about 30% this year," Butterfield said. "And in some cases they've sold out."
Locally, sales at the Armstrong Garden Centers chain are also up 30% this year. But Gary Jones, vice president of marketing, thinks the reasons go beyond the economic.

"It's also about people wanting to be closer to nature, the taste of homegrown vegetables and the whole food-miles thing -- people want to get their food from local sources," Jones said.

True, the carbon footprint from backyard to kitchen is zip. But the bottom-line question is: Can money be saved by gardening at home?

It's quite doable, garden experts insist.

Although not the way we did it down on the lower 40 (more like an 8-foot-by-4-foot raised bed) in a section of my backyard that was so barren it looked as if it should include a car up on blocks.

My partner in this venture was Susan Ortmeyer, a dog-park buddy who also wanted a garden but lives in a condo.

Together, we novices managed to overspend, over-water and come up with a garden that was bountiful -- at first -- but produced blah-tasting vegetables.

Still, it's quite possible for first-timers to be successful, given the ample instructional and other resources at hand in Southern California.

And it can be done at a wide range of costs.

Marta Teegen, who owns Homegrown, a Los Angeles-based garden consulting company, will come to your house and install a vegetable garden with your choice of plants. She generally puts in about four 4-by-6-foot raised beds.

The average cost -- $2,000.

At that rate, and because this is Los Angeles, it's no surprise that several of her clients are celebrities (whom she declined to name) with private chefs.